You go one down after 19 minutes and it had been coming for most of that.

“We didn’t really get out the blocks but we give them some credit. They put us on the back foot and we didn’t really recover. We talked about getting the next goal after half time but we didn’t. We didn’t get to the level we know we can.”

Boro have 11 first team players currently nursing injuries and Mowbray was forced into making three changes for yesterday’s game.

The Boro boss didn’t want to use his long injury list as an excuse, but admitted it was beginning to catch up with his squad.

After Saturday’s cup tie, Boro return to league action with a home game against Watford and Mowbray hopes a lot of his injured players will be available by the time that game comes around.

He said: “Sometimes it catches up with you when you make too many changes, but they were enforced changes I had to make.

“We couldn’t get to the speed of it but hopefully we will put it behind us quickly and we can try and get a few players back for the next game.

“I’m not here to make excuses really and yet I’ll let other people go away and look at the ones that weren’t available today.”